Food And Talk Served Here

Fruit Cake

Breakfast, back at my home, has always been idli and dosa. Varieties and new recipes do come in every now and then, but nothing has come even close to challenging the position of dosa and idli.

The only time there was a serious competition was when my mother bought the oven. What followed was a cake festival. The three of us would hang around the oven sniffing and compelling the cake to complete baking just by looking at it.

I still remember my mother munching on a piece of fruit cake and commenting, ‘Mmm..very nice. We can have this for breakfast instead of the same old idli and dosa’.

The oven may have won the battle, but the war was won by idli ultimately. After a fervent baking session, the oven was shoved aside to a corner and the idli cooker resumed its usual place.

When I saw this boiled fruit cake in Joy of Baking, it reminded me of the cake amma used to make. So I too started the nostalgic process of adding the raisins and tutti fruities to the batter, while Shreyas hang around saying, ‘Mmm.. smells nice’.

Ingredients:

Sugar : 1 cup (Brown, if possible)

Hot water : 1 cup

Butter : 1/4 cup (50 gms)

Mixed Spice : 1 tsp (or ground cinnamon + ground cloves)

Ground Ginger : 1 tsp

Eggs : 2

All purpose flour : 1 1/2 cups

Baking soda : 1 tsp

Vanilla Extract : 1 tsp

Raisins : 1 cup (about 100 gms)

Candied Fruit : 3/4 cup (about 120 gms)

Method:

Pre heat the oven to 180 C. Grease a 9″ long loaf pan.

In a large pan, add the hot water, butter, raisins, ground ginger,sugar and mixed spice powder. You can include half a teaspoon of salt too, if you want to. Bring this to a boil, and let it cook for 5 minutes. Take off the heat, let it cool.

Beat the eggs and add it to the boiled fruit. Make sure that its cool, else the eggs might get cooked! Mix.

The cake looks wonderful – but having tried idlis and dosas and appams and being a lover of Indian food (north, south and everything in between), I’d be hard pressed to make a choice! Have a great start to 2012.